1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to prefabricated houses and more specifically to a method of using precast structural elements to form the walls and corners of a prefabricated house.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the field of housing construction, there has been a long-felt need for production of a well-built, inexpensive unit. With the increased cost of lumber and skilled labor, the cost of housing is increasing at an astronomical rate. Many solutions have been proposed to reduce housing cost. For example, wall sections are pre-assembled in a production line technique and are shipped to sites where they are interconnected. The materials used have included wood as well as concrete. The wood is more expensive as a raw material then concrete, but it is also easier and cheaper to transport. Conversely, concrete is a cheap material but is is very expensive to transport in large sections since its high density increases the weight of the load.
The cost of building a factory and the problems and expense of transportation have almost brought to a halt the construction of concrete cubicals which are stacked in various configurations on site to complete a house. Realizing that the concrete is an inexpensive material, other types of prefabricated concrete elements have been used to structure houses. These articles have included enormous L-shaped slabs constituting a wall and a floor or a wall and a ceiling of a unit, prefabricated T's and H's which also constitute walls and ceilings or floors and various other configurations.
Though using prefabricated concrete sections to be assembled in formed dwellings, the sections in general have been very large and thus have not overcome the transportation problem. Similarly, these various segments and configurations which have been used in the prior art have not been versatile enough to reduce the number of parts or the skill of the labor involved in assembling these elements to create a dwelling. Also, the lack of versatility of the prefabricated concrete configurations of the prior art have limited the architect's scope in designing the houses or dwellings.
Though concrete dwellings were considered the answer to tornadoes and earthquakes, as of yet no specific prefabricated concrete house has been considered sufficiently earthquake-proof. With the recent earthquakes in Nicaragua and various other Central American countries, a great need exists for a building construction which will withstand great quake tremors for a sufficient amount of time to allow the inhibitants to escape the dwellings. To withstand large tremors, a structure must be capable of distributing large horizontal and vertical forces and motions. Normally, either direction of motion will cause interconnecting structures to sheer and thus separate.